No ID. No missing person report. No family or friends had ever come to claim him. He had no visitors except for the doctors, nurses and hospital volunteers like Mary Margaret. John Doe's case had always made Mary Margaret feel terribly sad when she visited the hospital; how awful to have no one to come find you when you were lost.
Except now, maybe he did.
Emma's claim had been met with incredulity by the hospital staff; John Doe had been here for years – how many exactly they couldn't quite recall, but certainly more than Emma would be able to remember. She couldn't possibly have known this man before his coma, Dr Whale explained. Emma kept insisting they were wrong, that she'd seen him last year and he was fine. This convinced Mary Margaret again that Emma must be mistaken, because she herself knew John Doe had been in a coma in this hospital for as long as she had been teaching in Storybrooke.
She felt terrible for Emma, because she knew she believed what she was saying, and was distressed by seeing the man she believed to be her father in a coma. Before things could be explained to Emma, it was time to get the other children back to school. In order to convince Emma to leave his bedside she promised Emma that as soon as they had taken her class back to school, they would come straight back to the hospital. Emma consented to this, but was silent and sullen for the trip – she could tell that no one believed her.
She stayed silent until they were again by John Doe's bedside. Mary Margaret had tried to explain to her that they didn't think John Doe could be her father because he had been here a very, very long time, always asleep, unable to wake up. She'd struggled to get the words out, because she could see they were breaking Emma's heart.
"Why?" she asked.
"It's called a coma, and sometimes it happens to people when they are hurt very badly."
"Somebody hurt him?"
Emma rubbed her cast, her eyes fixed on John Doe.
"I'm not really sure. It was a long time ago…. I think he was in a car accident."
"When will he wake up?" Emma asked, and she looked up at Mary Margaret with eyes that begged her to say he would.
Mary Margaret tried to answer but had to stop because she was suddenly she was close to tears. Emma's shoulders slumped and her eyes dropped from John Doe to the ground. She didn't need an answer anymore, and Mary Margaret couldn't stop the couple of tears that escaped her best efforts to contain them. She dropped into the chair by John Doe's bed and wiped them away. There were several moments of silence in the hospital room, broken only by the intermittent beeping of John Doe's machines.
"Can we read him a story?" Emma asked quietly, sounding defeated and resigned.
"Sure," Mary Margaret agreed readily, glad for the distraction and happy to give Emma anything that might cheer her up at this point.
Emma pulled the fairytale book from her backpack and brought it over.
"Which one are we up to?" Mary Margaret asked as she pulled Emma and her book onto her lap.
Emma opened the book, and dropped the book mark on top of her bag.
"Snow White."